Local and state officials described harrowing rescues at the height of superstorm Sandy and massive reconstruction efforts at the Senate Budget Committee’s first Sandy recovery hearing today.

Belmar has already designed a new 1.3-mile, $26-million boardwalk that it hopes will be completed in time for Memorial Day, mayor Matthew Doherty told the committee. The new structure will be fortified against future storms and will be accompanied by a new steel seawall.

Rebuilding the boardwalk is “a beginning, a practical and necessary step,” Doherty said. The project will spur the return of the tourism the town relies on, he said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay 75 percent of the boardwalk’s cost, he said.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney said he is confident Belmar’s boardwalk will be well-designed and will incorporate lessons from Sandy, but he warned governments should not rush into rebuilding.

Officials need to “take a deep breathe and slow down a little bit so we can rebuild properly,” he said outside the committee hearing. “Making sure we don’t do the same things over and over again so we don’t have to rebuild over and over again is a priority for me,” he said.

The budget committee’s hearings, which will be held in storm-damaged towns throughout the state, are aimed at learning what needs to be done and how best to recover from Sandy, Sweeney said.

Today’s hearing took place in Toms River, where thousands of buildings were damaged by the storm.

At least 5,000 residents are still displaced from their homes, Toms River officials said, and about half of the town’s waterfront properties on the mainland were uninhabitable, at least temporarily.

It will take three to five years to recover, according to Paul Shives, the township’s business administrator.

The town will need help from the state, he said. It is simultaneously facing massive recovery costs alongside plummeting property tax receipts from the damaged properties.

“I implore the state to look into some sort of financial assistance,” Shives said.

The Toms River police chief spent much of his testimony describing the night of the storm itself.

Most of the town’s barrier island residents heeded Governor Christie’s mandatory evacuation order, Chief Michael Mastronardy said. But people on the mainland, which was not under a mandatory evacuation, faced a deluge of water, too.

Toms River saw 400 water rescues during the storm, he said. Many people were trapped by Sandy’s unprecedented storm surge.

With so many rescues, the town had to use anything it could find to get people out, the police chief said, including jet skis, canoes and front-end loaders, which were high enough to drive through the flooding.

“When they say a surge, it was a surge,” Mastronardy said. “I’ve never seen anything in my lifetime. It was basically a tsunami that we got hit with.”

The police chief said he heard of one man who was trapped by the water while trying to evacuate. The man had to abandon his car and jump in a boat drifting by, Mastronardy said.

Miraculously, Mastronardy said, no one died on the barrier island in Toms River. “That is amazing when you look at the destruction that is over there,” he said.

Comments

Search The Political State

Subscribe to The Political State

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 73 other subscribers

The Bloggers

Melissa Hayes, who has worked at The Record since 2010, covers Gov. Chris Christie and politics for the State House Bureau. Follow her on Twitter at @Record_Melissa. View all of her posts

Herb Jackson is the Washington correspondent for The Record, covering North Jersey issues on the Potomac, including the activities of the congressional delegation and federal policies that affect the region. Follow him on Twitter @Record_DC.View all of his posts.

Salvador Rizzo covers politics for The Record’s State House bureau, with a focus on financial issues and the state budget, and legal issues in the New Jersey courts. Follow him on Twitter @rizzoTK.View all of his posts.

Charles Stile is the political columnist for The Record. He is a former State House Bureau chief at The Record and has covered politics and government in New Jersey for more than two decades. Follow him on Twitter @PoliticalStile. View all of his posts